Things to get curious about…
Why we need to start asking why again
As children we ask why as many times as there are hours in the day, curiously questioning the world around us: Why is the sky blue? Why are the leaves green? No element of our world is accepted with any certainty until we have exhausted the why’s. At school the learning usually comes to us in one direction, from teacher to pupil, content selected from a closely curated curriculum, curiosity met with a prescribed list of potential answers and incessant questioning met with weariness. At work, depending on our industry, our curiosity is met with two possible responses: If there is a commercial viability it is encouraged or if we are questioning someone who’s job title is higher than ours on the org chart, then we’re in for a bumpy ride.
Decade by decade our curiosity is managed, until we have been given a series of truths by which to live our lives, we can’t remember who these truth tellers were or the origins for such rules we have always followed. But something shifts when we start questioning again, suddenly the world becomes a strange place as we get curiouser and curiouser.
When I dared to question the world of work: why do we work consistently all our lives for this magical date in the future where we can finally enjoy our freedom, if we even make it that far? The possible answers delivered no solid reason other than that is how it has always been done or that’s what our parents did and those before them too, that’s not a good enough answer for me. In really asking this question I freed myself from a job that made me deeply unhappy, took time to heal from the experience and started to think about how I wanted to live the rest of my life and found my way back to writing after almost 20 years.
Wonderful things happened when I started to ask why again, and that’s why I’ve started Curiouser and Curiouser, a space to question the things we have always thought to be true. The answers might lead us down the rabbit hole but they also might just set us free. Each week I will explore something to get Curiouser and Curiouser about and I’d love to hear from you, yes YOU, on what you are most curious about. What do you want to question but have not dared to? The big questions and the small, the serious and the not so serious, it’s all up for grabs.
Each week I will also share what I’ve been curious about, a little spark to inspire your curious minds to explore. In the busyness of life it’s often difficult to come up for air let alone have the time to question and learn but my hope is that when this newsletter lands gently in your inbox each week it will give you some things to ponder as you go about your week.
What I’ve been curious about this week…
The average life is four thousand weeks long
I joined a Penguin Live via Zoom with Oliver Burkeman this week to discuss his best selling book ‘Four Thousand Weeks’ that has already piqued the interest of thousands. This book has been on my wish list since it launched but as demand has pushed the price up of the hardcover edition I’m holding my nerve, so more to come on this subject in the future.
Oliver Burkeman talked briefly on 3 of the concepts from the book which I will be taking forward into my week and beyond:
The concept of ‘Finitude’ that time is finite and you’re never going to be able to do all the things or do all the things perfectly so you might as well stop beating yourself up about it.
Productivity is the desire to control time and not accept the reality that we are all essentially adrift. Rest is to accept this fact and be present in the moment, doing something for the sake of it and not for an outcome.
Procrastination is something to get better at rather and avoid completely. It’s about making the right choices, the one or 2 things that will make a difference.
Why it’s sometimes good to quit
There is an interesting shift in perspective on quitting rumbling through at the moment with Journalists like Farrah Storr and Elizabeth Day saying farewell to jobs they have done for decades. We’ve always been told quitting is a bad thing but now it’s seen as re-prioritisation and the opening up of space for us to uncover what's really important to us.
Read the article here: